A question to kick off Mother's Day Weekend:
What makes this flower so unique?
The Corner On Character: fairness
Showing posts with label fairness. Show all posts
Showing posts with label fairness. Show all posts
The Comparison Game
fairness,
joy,
quotes,
reflections
2.03.2026
In honor of National School Counseling Week 2026,
I asked AI to create this caricature of me in my element.
PPBF: Our Playground Rules!
Today I'm excited because I'm getting ready
for four author visits in the next two weeks.
The Dog Days of Summer
adoption,
books,
dogs,
fairness,
friendship,
happiness,
kindness,
love,
responsibility
7.05.2018
As we cruise into July and wade knee deep into the dog days of summer,
I'm thinking about, well, our best furry friends.
It started when my friend Tanya sent me this picture of Milo.
Don't you love this?
For some reason, it reminded me of this essay I found years ago:
It's whimsical, sure, but also kind of fun to imagine.
Dogs do have a lot to teach us, after all.
Then I remembered I'd promised to share
the story of Digger, The Hero Dog.
It tells the real-life tale of Digger, who
saved his friend Kilee from a burning building.
his heroic rescue and her determined recovery
Use it to talk about fire safety, loyalty and friendship.
It also reminded me that I've never told you about
this Maribeth Boelts (of Those Shoes fame)
treasure I found at the half-price store awhile back.
It is the sweetest story, one you can use
as a springboard for a discussion on adoption,
friendship, and unconditional love.
Finally, I realized I've never showcased this title, one of our Joshua's
childhood favorites about fairness, starring Pinky and Blue.
Blue puts up with a lot from his little friend Pinky, including sharing almost everything. One non-negotiable, however, is his favorite toy rabbit. Will the squabble over that squishy rip their friendship apart? The brilliant illustrations and hilarious text make this one a delightfully engaging read-aloud for your young dog-lovers.
Want some more dog-gone good read alouds?
What are your go-to faves for the dog days of summer?
Sweet Student Sentiments
bulletin boards,
counseling,
equality,
equity,
fairness
2.10.2018
Today I'm feeling overwhelmed by the kindness, appreciation and love I feel as I savor these hand-made creations from my special friends during
Each treasured card more creative than the next.
Pop-up cards, pocket cards, hearts, flowers, rainbows.
It's so rewarding to see our core values and SEL messages
shine through their sweet sentiments.
This one was made by our AP's third-grade daughter.
Her teacher may have mentioned that my favorite football team is the Green Bay Packers, so they decorated their cards in green and gold.
They are all going into my Smile File; I wish that I could share each and every one with you. I truly am abundantly blessed.
This next week is Random Acts of Kindness Week.
Do you have any big celebration plans?
Here are some ideas for helping raise kind kids from Dr. Michele Borba.
Our character cam spied this board out in our third-grade area.
Have you seen the Band-Aid lesson? We decided to ask one of our 4th-grade classes role play this fairness lesson at our Character Ambassadors Assembly last week, to show our students the important distinction between equality and equity.
Can you believe there were 550 people in that room?
I was so proud of how kind and attentive our students were
and how courage Mrs. Romolo's class was to perform like this.
What's your best practice for teaching this distinction?
My favorite new book to complement this lesson is
Off now to our High School Musical.
Happy weekend.
Seeds Of Compassion, Kindness & Care
Today I'm excited because one of our teachers made this beauty for me.
It's true, you know, about kindness being contagious.
Look at the homemade cards that came in today's mail,
from Bridget, a school counselor in IN, and her school family.
I joyfully added their school to our kindness map.
Doesn't this just make your heart smile?
We are so grateful for all of these seeds of kindness
and we promise to harvest them all and pay it forward.
 |
| Click the image for freebie printables by Shannon. |
One of the seeds on our map comes from the author of
one of my favorite (new-to-me) titles with a fairness theme.
 |
| Click the image for a You Tube read-aloud. |
Fair doesn't always mean equal. This is the picture perfect tale to help our learners understand the difference between equality and equity. In this story, the animals don't understand how it can be that Zookeeper loves them equally if she doesn't feed them equal amounts?
After trying to figure that out and in an attempt to make it more fair, Hare, Giraffe, and Elephant decide to take matters into their own tummies and equalize their piles of food once Zookeeper leaves. And as you can imagine, Hare and Giraffe can't possibly eat all of the food on their newly-portioned piles and their bellies are full while Elephant is left wanting (and needing) more. Food is getting wasted while Elephant is wasting away. Now that's a problem. But will it help them understand that fair does not always mean equal?
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| Click the image for more goodness from Sweet Blessings! |
Check out this fairly-new book;
it'll be a fantastic addition to your character collection.
Need some intriguing ideas for enriching this read-aloud?
What is your favorite way to teach this tricky concept?
We are thankful to the Varela family for sharing this treasure with us and for supporting one of our families that was flooded. Life isn't always fair, but it is easier with generous people planting seeds of compassion, kindness and care.
The Value Of Fairness
Today I'm excited because I got to speak at the Harris County Department of Education Mid-Winter Conference and Joelle, a blogger whose worked I've followed over at Not Just Child's Play for some time now, came to my workshop. What a treat!
This on the heels of a week of kindness and a month of fairness in the spotlight. Yesterday we started the day with our Fairness Pep Rally.
My heart is bursting at the seams.
We shared a fairness film clip called Touching Them All and, despite there being 500 intermediate learners in the gym, you could have heard a pin drop while the story of an injured college softball player and an odd ruling on the field played out.
The Character Cam caught the Principal giving out Bag Tags
to those students who'd been nominated for putting fairness into action.
Every day.
Because we get more of what we focus on.
So much great energy when we spotlight character.
In leadership classes, we've been strengthening our fairness muscles with this activity we did fifteen years ago at the Character Counts! character development seminar. Our job was to read these six applications and decide which child we would award a scholarship to:
Of course we found that difficult to do because we simply didn't have enough information to make a fair decision. And that's the point, right? I've done a WOW Awards variation of this with my younger students, but now that I'm in intermediate, I decided to try this one. Since the activity was originally intended for high school students and/or adults, I altered the bios ever so slightly so that they read like this:
After a little puppet show with my pirate puppet Patch, who doesn't think it's fair that he has a hook for a hand and they don't, we dig in. I tell the students that we have a scholarship worth 100K to pay for college for one of these students. We talk about what the word scholarship means, and a few of them knew that scholarships are typically designated to reward something, like good grades, athleticism, or financial need. It's good to put that out there, but let them know that this scholarship is for students, not for something specific. Be vague on purpose; you'll come back to that later when you get to the point of not really being able to fairly evaluate these candidates against one another without better criteria up front. I ask for a volunteer to read what we know about the first applicant.
After reading about Sarah, I suggest that maybe we should just go ahead and give it to her. After all, teachers don't really make that much money and, well, they do love their teacher, right? Try as I may to convince them to just give it to the teacher's kid, my students convince me that it wouldn't be fair to just give it to Sarah because she's first but that we need to read them all.
So I play along, every once in awhile putting in a plug for one or trying to make it seem unfair, to get them thinking. Evaluating. Reflecting.
And after we discuss whom they think we ought to give it to and why,
we take it to a vote, at their suggestion, to be fair.
{None of them thinks paper, rock, scissors ought to decide something this important!}
They suggest that each student ought to have a voice since they're pretty sure it'd be too hard to agree on just one candidate as a group. And yet, this is what that vote looked like at our school:
We tallied our fifth-grade vote on the left after our discussion made it clear to me that they weren't as set on giving it to Nelda as the younger voters. Their thinking had to do with Matthew possibly being the best steward of our scholarship. I was riveted by their reflections and really wished we'd have had more time to talk it through. We still have three classes that will vote on Monday, so it'll be interesting to see if Matthew gains any more momentum.
Real-life data.
From intermediate-aged fairness ambassadors.
Their argument pretty solid:
The majority wants the scholarship to go to Nelda,
because she needs our help.
Fairness, they explained to me, is all about giving people
what they need
when they need it,
to level the playing field.
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| Click image for source. |
After the results were in, I did try to play devil's advocate one more time.
Me: Oh, dear, I forgot to tell you that our scholarship donor wants the money to go to a teacher's child.
Them: That's not fair to tell us that after we voted.
Me: You're right! Criteria needs to be set ahead of time and not changed midstream. You sure do know a lot about fairness.
Then, to seal the deal with a movement break,
we did a whole-body paper, rock, scissors contest.
What a rush that was, to feel the energy of that brain boost.
UPDATE: Monday morning, a third-grade learner came up to me in the hallway with an important inquiry on his heart: Is it too late to change my vote? He said that he'd been thinking about it and he'd changed his mind about who ought to get the scholarship, from Nelda to Matthew because he got to thinking and he's pretty sure Matthew would do a better job with our money.
The learning is, indeed, in the reflection!
For more ideas on teaching the value of fairness,
including the concept of equality versus equity,
Inspiring Mindfulness
band,
counseling,
fairness,
mindfulness,
perseverance,
relaxation,
songs
11.02.2016
Today I'm thinking about mindfulness.
About being in the moment.
About savoring every second.
About the power of deep breathing.
You see, chaos has come calling a lot lately;
October tends to be like that.
Lots of planning, lots of running around.
Football games.
Band competitions.
Homecoming Weekend.
Character Counts Week.
Red Ribbon Week.
Fall festivals.
At-risk data collection.
SOCKtober.
Halloween.
But just because chaos invites us in
doesn't mean we have to go, right?
I found myself helping some fifth-grade girls
breathe through their drama today,
and wondered why I don't do more of that for myself.
Breathe.
Just breathe.
And be.
Just be.
I often wake up craving a nap.
To get away.
To relax.
To restore.
And I think it's a wake-up call
to do a better job with mindfulness and self-care.
So in my research, I've found these resources:
***************************
In case you missed my guest post at Free Spirit Press last week on the importance of teaching fairness, click {here} to go there.
And, as an update in our personal journey,
Joshua's high school marching band
qualified as one of the 39 6A bands to march in the
Texas State Marching Band Competition.
So next Tuesday, they'll take their show called
Dot To Dot
to San Antonio to perform in the Alamodome.
As the dots on the field during this year's poetry-in-motion unfold,
engaged spectators are visually inspired with reminders to
Look Forward,
Trust In Something,
Follow Your Heart,
Connect The Dots.
We are so proud of their hard work,
their determination and drive,
their passion and perseverance
in their quest for the best
and we thank the dedicated directors,
the proud and very patient parents,
and the valued volunteers
for giving of their time and talent
to be that village that every child needs.
Good luck, Band.
Just To Be Fair
All he wanted was for life to be fair.
For his children. For mankind. For goodness sake.
Just ... and fair.
Those who went before him wanted that very thing.
As do those of us who've stayed behind.
Justice. Equality. Equity.
Just to be fair.
So today we pause to honor, celebrate and thank
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
How will you carry on his dream?
I'm on my way out the door for a training in CCISD;
before I go, some links to help keep MLK's dream alive.
Unless ...
Today, I'm super giddy about this visual display that my creativity guru put the finishing touches on in our Character Cafe this afternoon. Thank you, Terri, for gracing us with your presence, time and talents. You help make us shine!
Unless ...
It challenges us to be intentional, doesn't it?
So that's what we're doing in peace class.
We're intentionally talking fairness in kind of a round-about way, under the guise of the wow awards. I wrote about this once before a few years back {here}. This time around, our wow awards are taking a new twist because after the puppet picks a nominee for all the wrong reasons, and shouts of "that's not fair" ensue and die down, I'm asking the students what they think the right reasons to be nominated for and receive a wow award might be. Then, I'm taking it a step further and asking whom they would nominate for a wow award.
It is heartwarming to hear them describe the kindness, respect, empathy and love that they're looking for in a recipient for this award friend. And it leads directly into a discussion about how we need the rules & criteria up front in order to make things fair. It's also launching us into a discussion about what's important, outside stuff like hair bows, a certain color of clothing, sparkly boots, hats, glasses, hair or eye color that we can't control or the inside stuff, like our character, that we can control.
Nothing is sweeter than listening to the innocent yet insistent voice of a child trying to explain that distinction to a puppet who doesn't get it. One second grader even added, "Mrs. Gruener, are you actually going to do a lesson? Because if you are, then maybe you could let Fred listen in and come back at the end of the lesson to give out the wow award." How cute and spot on is that?
“Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.” ~Martin Luther King Jr.
Unless.
WoW.
Fair Or Foul?
Today I'm thinking about the difference between equity and equality, because equal doesn't always mean fair! I think my favorite description of fair has to do with leveling the playing field. Fairness is all about meeting people where they are, giving them what they need when they need it.
That's why we differentiate instruction in education.
To meet individual needs.
To give everyone a fair chance.
Some of my favorite books to
help students understand fairness include:
It's Not Fair by Amy Krouse Rosenthal
Rotten And Rascal by Paul Geraghty
Mine! by Kevin Luthardt
Squirrel's New Year's Resolution by Pat Miller
Share With Brother by Steven Layne
Read these books, then follow up by comparing and contrasting them on a double bubble map or H-map graphic organizer.
Or play a game of Fair Or Foul?
Ask kids to identify whether or not the following scenarios would hit a fair ball or a foul ball in the game of life. If foul, have students explain
how they would make the situation fair.
1. You use your mom's educator discount card
at a book store to buy a book that's not for school.
2. You let your friend cut in front of you in a long line
to buy tickets for a concert you're both eager to see.
3. You only share with kids who live on your street.
4. You take the last cookie from the cookie jar and
you don't share it with your sister.
5. You take a soccer ball out to recess so that
you get to decide who gets to play with it.
6. You don't like the center that you're assigned to today,
so you trade clips with your friend when nobody's looking.
7. The boy with emotional difficulties in your class
always gets to be the line leader.
8. You see your friend take something
that doesn't belong to her and you don't say anything.
9. You save a seat for the new kid at lunch.
10. You don't know the answer to a question on your homework,
so your friend gives you her paper to copy.
What other scenarios might you use for this riveting game?
The WoW Awards
WoW! Today marks post #365 for me at the Corner -
one a day for an entire year!
To celebrate this milestone, I'm linking up with author
Maria Dismondy
for Make A Difference Monthly. If you haven't met Maria, you simply must do yourself a favor and visit her beautiful website to learn more about her and her books! She is a sweet, sweet soul so I'm happily partnering with her to teach fairness.
one a day for an entire year!
To celebrate this milestone, I'm linking up with author
Maria Dismondy
for Make A Difference Monthly. If you haven't met Maria, you simply must do yourself a favor and visit her beautiful website to learn more about her and her books! She is a sweet, sweet soul so I'm happily partnering with her to teach fairness.
 |
| Click here to go there! |
I haven't written a lot about my puppets because, even after twelve years with them, it still feels kind of weird to the adult in me to have these conversations with myself while pretending to talk with a piece of cloth on my hand. But the kids LOVE, LOVE, LOVE my puppets, so I do it. For them. And guess what? My puppets are actually very funny. If anyone ever asked me about my secret to student engagement, I'd totally say two words:
Puppet Power.
My students are SO enamored with these fur balls that they've been known to ask about them during fire drills!
Kids: Mrs. Gruener, where's Seymour?
Me: Uhhh, in my office . . . . . (gulp!)
Yeah, try explaining that one.
Anyway, the kids' favorites are Seymour the seal, Boris the bear, Pillar the Caterpillar, Junior the Giraffe, Hammy the pig, and Rainbow the Toucan. Here's a picture of part of the seal family and Pillar from a few years back; their beauty is timeless. Me? I've aged a bit . . . one of my own children actually built that little play house for them.
OK, so on to the lesson. See the seal with shades? That's a pint-sized Seymour. Let's say I use Seymour to set the scene. I get the kids settled in my office and tell them that Seymour is going to give out the WoW awards today. Those kids hear the word award and they suddenly sit up straight, hands in their lap, flat and forward, crisscross applesauce! So I ask them what they might get a WoW award for . . . and they start listing off all of the positive behaviors that we might notice, basically all of the bucket-filling things we do and pillar practices we want to see. Seymour can even be making a list if you've got a white board handy
(and can write with a seal on your hand).
Then it's Seymour's turn to pick. He randomly gives the award to a kid with glasses, just like him. When we ask Seymour how he selected his WoW winner, he flat out tells them that it's because the kid's wearing glasses, just like him. (If there aren't any students with glasses, then he picks someone with a white shirt, just like him.) Well, you can imagine the shouts of "that's not fair!" that fill the air, a refrain that sets us up beautifully for a talk about how knowing the criteria up front makes things so much more fair. It is SO cute to listen to my little leaders telling Seymour how the cow ate the cabbage when it comes to being fair.
To conclude, we put their criteria for a WoW award on a poster board that I give to the teacher with a class set of Character Honor Roll pencils so that she can give out her own WoW awards as she catches students WoWing her by playing fair, following the rules, taking turns and sharing (along with any other other good-choice behaviors that they put on the list!). Such a great visual reminder that good character is in their hands! And speaking of hands, for months after that lesson, the kids would give me a secret hand signal spelling out WoW using the sign language letters.
Seal the deal with this little ditty I wrote, using the hand-jive motions:
Gotta be fair, you've gotta be fair;
Gotta take turns and you've gotta share.
You've gotta be fair, just gotta be fair.
Gotta play by the rules, all the time and everywhere!
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